Packaged baked goods are often placed in large, open-topped transport trays which are designed to be stackable in nested relation, one upon the other, while leaving sufficient room between adjacent trays to accommodate the baked goods. Such trays typically are several feet across in width and length and are fairly shallow in height. While a person is able to carry a few stacked trays by hand, it becomes much more difficult to handle the trays in this manner when a large and heavier stack of trays is involved.
The current practice for handling such large stacks of trays in the baked goods industry, to applicant's knowledge, is to load them onto the platform of a fork-lift truck, or onto a four-wheeled floor cart. However, the presently used equipment is fairly large and cumbersome when it comes time to store it, and when used to transport trays aboard a congested delivery vehicle of the type which is commonly used to deliver the baked goods to market. More maneuverable, conventional, two-wheeled hand trucks are not equipped to handle large stacks of such trays. Typically, the nose plate of such two-wheeled hand trucks extends forwardly of the side rails of the hand truck a distance far short of what is required to support such trays in a stable manner, and the trays would tip forwardly off the truck.
The present invention overcomes or greatly minimizes all the foregoing objections.